Khross wrote:
Diamondeye:
There you go trying to ascribe motive again. It would behoove you to stop that.
Why? Because you don't like it? You ascribe motive all the time, Khross; it shouldn't bother you when people make logical inferences about your motives from what people say.
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I pointed out that you two are discussing one particular segment of American Christianity. Painting all Christians with broad strokes, on either side of the discussion, does nothing for clarity and less for meaningful discussion.
In that case you should have directed your comments at Farsky rather than me. Farsky was talking about what "Christians" do when - by your own admission - he pretty clearly mean American Evangelical Christians, for whom a more logical shortening would have been "evangelicals" or "fundamentalists". Since he was painting Christians with such a broad brush, I responded using the same terminology
because that broad brush does not apply to all or even most Christians, even in this country.
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I purposefully did not comment on issues regarding any real or perceived social malignancy toward Christianity. Were I attempting to start an argument, that's probably the point more likely to generate one.
Khross, you were trying to start an argument:
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Diamondeye:
You apparently live in an entirely different country than the rest of us.
Yes, clearly people making neutral comments on an ongoing discussion start it off with a sarcastic comment directed at only one party to the discussion. Khross, if you don't want your motives inferred, don't undertake actions that allow people to infer them.
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But, you know, I didn't address that facet of your post. I addressed the fact that its Evangelicals who are by and large dogmatically opposed to everything "not us", regardless of the brand of Evangelicals.
This criticism relates to a lot of groups, religious and otherwise, and isn't saying very much. In point of fact, it has far more to do with being American than being Evangelical. The idea of spreading a particular way of thinking by simply insisting on it hard enough seems to be an
American trait, and it seems to attach itself to Christianity the more westernized the Christianity is.
Let's address that in 2 parts: A) the westernization of Christianity, and B) the American trait of prostelytization for ideas in general, religious or not.
First, I note that the Christian subset you mentioned was Orthodox catholic, which could be described also as Eastern catholic or Eastern Orthodox, leaving aside debates over the exact degree of overlap of these terms. Some Orthodox Christians will describe themselves as "Catholic, but not Roman." Christianity originated in the east and in reality is an eastern religion, not a western one. Orthodox Christians tend to identify the western church with innovation and heterodoxy, starting from the Great Schism, the
filioque and other related events. One of the titles of the Pope is "Patriarch of the West" - prior to the Schism he was only one of several Patriarchs, most of whom were from the East. Granted, he could have been described as "first among equals" but the fact remains that prior to the Schism, the center of gravity of Christianity was much farther east than it is now. That eastern Catholicism, by your own description, is unlikely to be found prostelytizing.
American Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, are largely a result of the sorts of people inclined to come to the New World in the first place - people with underlying differences with the European churches holding power throughout the late 17th and the 18th centuries - reacting to the environment they were in; namely that of theological separation from centralizing doctrinal authority, relative geographical isolation both from that same centralizing authority and from each other, and political independence from authorities that discouraged or prohibited public airing of different views on spiritual matters (or for that matter anything political). This combination of relative isolation, a desire to separate from religious establishment, and a permissive environment in which to do so produced the attitude of evangelism. Evangelical Christians are no different from any other American in terms of feeling pretty much completely free to say whatever they want.
This set of conditions, however, has also created the focus on individual congregations and the accompanying parochial behaviors of many evangelicals. Once your larger group (which can be "Anabaptists" or "puritans" or whoever) has separated from the larger Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, or whoever, it becomes much easier to internally fragment. Even relatively non-evangelical denominations such as Lutherans have done it- there are 3 major varieties of Lutheran in this country, and possibly some smaller ones as well. But more evangelical denominations tend to behave like a uranium core going critical - each separation makes the next one easier, and hence we have over 800 varieties of Baptist, and a near-endless array of non-denominational churches.
These churches do tend to be united in one respect though - absolute insistence that A) biblical literalism is an imperative B) that they engage in it absolutely and at all times and C) that any disagreement between their particular brand of their denomination, or their congregation and anyone else - or for that matter even within their congregation, sometimes over matters as trivial as which way traffic should flow in their parking lot - is a result of the other party not adhering to biblical literalism. Any concept of tradition or central authority or even understanding reached through faith is
verboten; their ideas are literal, and any idea that has not occurred to them must not be literal.
The irony of this is that
Biblical literalism itself is a tradition - Scripture certainly does not mandate it.
Sola Scriptura does not require Biblical literalism:
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Sola scriptura does not deny that other authorities govern Christian life and devotion, but sees them all as subordinate to and corrected by the written word of God.
Even less so the similar doctrine of
Prima Scriptura used within Methodism and Anglicanism.
Literalism is Sola Scriptura taken to an extreme, and is a result of people in small groups engaging in groupthink - there is no outside anchor for their ideas and over time they tend to become more and more narrow, especially as people who think differently decide to depart. American evangelicals and American Christians in general tend to think that because practically any doctrine is
legally defensible - they have a legal right to believe what they wish - that it therefore is equally theologically defensible, and we end with small local churches that tend to think that their pastor teaches the Bible exactly as written and
everyone else in the rest of the world doesn't - completely oblivious to the fact that down the road another pastor may be found doing the exact same thing.
The aforementioned second part of this is the American tendency to do this in everything - political belief, even in regard to sports. Much of our present political fragmentation is a result of everyone prostelytizing, and demonizing different beliefs. Instead of threatening people with eternal damnation for their heresy, they are called racists or misogenists or homophobes, or else people tell them they just want a free handout, or don't care about the country's founding principles, or whatever. This comes from the same situation - a widely separated populace with differing needs based on locality tends to produce a certain internal isolationism.
There are also a lot of people that differ from what they grew up with or what surrounds them - in the so-called "Bible belt" there are still plenty of non-evangelical churches and plenty of people that are not or are only casually religious. Even in strongholds of one political persuasion, there is a consistent "floor" of 20-30% of people that swing to the opposite side of the spectrum, and often higher.
However, we tend to see those norms as utterly ubiquitous. If you are a person who grows up in a particular religious or political environment and differs from it or lives in such an environment there is a tendency to perceive yourself as unique or special when in fact you're merely uncommon.
Finally, and getting back specifically to evangelicals there is a tendency to complain primarily about
white evangelicals.
Black evangelical churches are suspiciously immune from criticism and often even notice. This is likely due to a combination of issues - the insularity of black churches and their focus on what they see as black social issues, combined with a strong desire to maintain the illusion that racial minorities, women, sexual minorities and others are all united in a fight against the White Male Christian Straight Guy wherein (for example) opposition to same-sex marriage is somehow related to being white or male, and where people can with a straight face refer to a "rape epidemic" that's suspiciously associated with
white males in this narrative - probably because while it's safe to talk about "males" in general in negative terms, if the example of a male in question happens to be black, the anti-rape narrative suddenly takes on the connotations of a lynching aimed at a black man for having sex with a white woman.
In that respect then, it's ok to get annoyed at white evangelicals for being too loud and obnoxious, but getting annoyed at black evangelicals must mean you oppose black demands for "social justice" and are Obviously A Racist.
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